126/365: National Beverage Day*

Take a big gulp of whatever you’d like today (unless you’re in New York City, of course – sizes limited to 16 ounces). It’s National Beverage Day!

As alluded to previously, it’s also National Crepes Suzette Day. As fond as I am of French pastries and lighting things on fire, we could use a break, so we’re taking the easy way out and celebrating the almighty beverage instead. We’ve had a few drink holidays before – we kicked off this challenge with one on the first day of the year, as a matter of fact – but those have all been in celebration of specific beverages (usually alcohol). Today is wide open to interpretation. And one of those rare food holidays we celebrate continuously throughout the day, with every meal!

Beverages have been around for as long as there were humans. Before there were humans, actually – assuming you believe we all crawled out of the primordial ooze. Companies like Evian make a living filtering and purifying that primordial ooze and selling it in plastic bottles for a couple of bucks a pop. How important are beverages? Experts recommend men drink 3 liters of liquid per day – that’s 13 cups! Women should consume 2.2 liters. Water is more important than food: we can survive 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. But beverage day would be boring if we were just drinking water.

We begin a typical day by turning on the Keurig. Tara and I enjoy our morning coffee, and have happily embraced the K-cup revolution. The Keurig is awesome: it’s fast, convenient, and eliminates wasted coffee. It even brews iced tea and lemonade. While we’re at work, we’re usually drinking ice water or booze. OK, that’s not an every day occurrence, but the company I work for has been known to break out alcohol during the workday on occasion. For dinner, it’s usually iced tea or lemonade (see aforementioned Keurig comment). Or milk, or water. I’m not real big on soda, but I enjoy an occasional Sprite or Coke or root beer. Tara likes Pepsi. I know, I know: there’s no accounting for taste. We both enjoy the occasional glass of wine, primarily white; I like sauvignon blanc while she is into riesling. I strongly dislike beer, but Tara digs Bud Light. My go-to alcoholic beverage is gin ‘n tonic, while hers is vodka and 7-Up. And of course, we’re both quite fond of bloody marys.

Today, we celebrated with a little bit of a lot of those beverages. Coffee, water, gin and tonic, iced tea and vodka…you name it, we drank it.

Related articles

• New Beverage Trends (foxnews.com)
• How to Make Cocktails With Your Keurig (gizmodo.com)